Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

To provide more insight, this is what the process is:

* There are two new entitlements related to this, which you ask Apple to give you if you're a dating app.

* Once you get the entitlements, you need to create a new version of your app (it cannot be the same as your international one) that will ship exclusively in the Netherlands with that entitlement.

* Details of how this entitlement work will come at a later date.

* Apple will still charge a commission on these purchases, the details of which will also come at a later date.

* It is your privilege/responsibility to conflict resolution with regards to refunds and such.

In essence, Apple complied with the law in the narrowest terms they could, but they did indeed change things and I suspect many companies will go through this process even if it's made somewhat inconvenient. I guess what remains to be seen is if these entitlements slowly get rolled out in other countries as they also enact legislation to require it.

> It is your privilege/responsibility to conflict resolution with regards to refunds and such.

Every time the apple fee comes up, this part of the discussion rarely comes up. This is a huge part of what you pay Apple/Google for. Lets say you roll your own on top of stripe [0]; each dispute/chargeback costs you $15 on top of the transaction cost. On an app with $0.99 purchases, each dispute will undo 15 purchases. If you get enough of these you _will_ be banned, quickly and with very little warning. I'm not going to claim that this on it's own is worth the full 30% whack but it does neet to be taken into consideration.

[0] https://stripe.com/docs/disputes

I would imagine all purchases to be a low dispute risk, as the merchant can simply offer refunds to all no questions asked. After all the marginal cost of goods sold for an app is probably effectively 0.

That being said, a $1 purchase through stripe likely has an effective fee higher than 30%, so this would only make sense for larger purchases.

The problem is that even with a no-hassle refund process some customers will still call their credit card company and ask for a chargeback because it's a process they're familiar with and it's easier for them to do than to go through any kind of custom process you've built for them. I imagine after dealing with customer support BS enough times your goodwill is eroded and you're just going to choose the path of least resistance for yourself.

> I would imagine all purchases to be a low dispute risk, as the merchant can simply offer refunds to all no questions asked.

That only works if you offer a no questions asked refund, and even at that, that doesn't imply 0 risk. Cards get stolen and tested on low value purchases all the time; if a scammer decides to check 1000 credit cards on your app, you're going to have a very bad time.

Not everyone who does a chargeback is looking to get their money back.

Some do it specifically because it will harm the merchant. Especially if they feel they've been wronged.

I dunno, traditional payment processors have gotten away with 1-2% charges in order to mitigate that kind of problem. I think Apple/Google are entitled to up-to a 5% cut to keep the lights on, but everything after that... it's a stretch. The big issue though (as many others have noted) is that there is no alternative. You have no opportunity to compete with Apple in this space, and that's what pisses off a lot of people. Normally, a competitive market is what ensures that those kinds of taxes stay reasonably low. Without anyone to compete with, Apple can set their own prices.

> I dunno, traditional payment processors have gotten away with 1-2% charges in order to mitigate that kind of problem

They do? In my experience it's much higher, particularly if you're dealing with low value transactions. When I worked in retail 15 years ago our payment handler charged a 1% fee on cash drops, and charged 0.30 plus 2% capped at some number I can't remember off the top of my head, _plus_ the card issuer fee. On a $100 transaction sure that's close to 2%, but on a $2 IAP or a $10 subscription (like Netflix) that's 17% and 5% respectively. I'm also pretty sure on top of that we had to pay a dispute fee if one was lodged with the issuer; presumably in the region of $10-15 per dispute. the risk of those disputed being opened on an online purchase vs an in person purchase is significantly higher.

> You have no opportunity to compete with Apple in this space, and that's what pisses off a lot of people

That's what a lot of people say, but how much of that is _really_ they just don't want to pay a 30% cut?

> They do? In my experience it's much higher

I'm not sure where you work (or where you live), but my experience has indeed been that payment processing is a pretty cut-and-dried technology at this point. People charge insane overhead for it because, as a marginal utility, other people have no way of determining what it's actual value is.

> That's what a lot of people say, but how much of that is _really_ they just don't want to pay a 30% cut?

I don't really think it matters, the statement is true nonetheless. If third-party app stores exist, Apple would be undercut in a heartbeat. By obstructing other people from competing with their App Store business, they're eliminating the need for the market to set a price.

You can argue to the ends of the earth with that logic (lord knows Apple keeps lawyers on retainer for that express purpose), but Apple's strategy here is to prevent them from having to compete with the rest of the market. There's a reason why European regulators are wising up to this nonsense (and a reason Apple obeys); it's a lost case. Everyone knows that it's dumb, the only defenses I've seen for it boil down to apologism and misunderstanding.

Why do we need to keep giving the world's largest company the benefit of the doubt? Can't we just hold them accountable for once?

That’s because they are forcing consumers with high interest (usury) rates.

Generally, developers I have seen that seem to want their own payment solution (which is not all developers, but the ones that matter here obviously) this is a good thing, because it lets them be in control of when refunds are done. Until now all app developers had to throw up their hands and put up a line on their website asking customers to contact Apple, which was obviously a poor experience and increased friction even in cases where a refund was desired by both the developer and user.

> which was obviously a poor experience and increased friction even in cases where a refund was desired by both the developer and user.

I've had much more luck with apple than I have with "developers". NYT is the textbook example that comes up here. You can sign up in one click but cancelling still requires phoning them up.

It's also analogous to a physical store; I don't ask kellogs for a refund if my cereal doesn't work, I ask the grocery store.

Note this is in the EU, not the USA, so consumer protection is a lot higher.

If the NYT tried this here, I'd just revoke access from my bank account, assuming they even had any. There is probably also a law specifying how to unsubscribe, but I can't tell how it works in the Netherlands.

UPDATE: Thinking this through, it allows us to put a monetary value on consumer protection. Much of what the apple 30% tax gives you as a consumer is built into law. So assuming a more reasonable cost of say 5%, small time devs get a loss of 25% of income because of the state of payments and consumer protection in the USA. You can haggle over percentages, but there is a cost.

NYT offers a subscription that can be purchased outside the US (I'm a subscriber to NYT cooking living in the UK), and to the best of my understanding you're still required to call even outside the US.

At least from Germany. And at least last year I could just cancel online

I was able to cancel NYT subscription from the EU without calling them.

> small time devs get a loss of 25% of income

Nitpicking: Apple takes 15% from small time devs (less than a million $)

> There is probably also a law specifying how to unsubscribe, but I can't tell how it works in the Netherlands.

The law here in the Netherlands is that you must be able to unsubscribe by the same method you subscribed in the first place.

Right, but ideally it would be that Apple would step in for cases where the developer is not cooperating. For cases where the developer wants to give you your money back, they still have to refer you to Apple so that they can make their own decision on whether you’re owed a refund, which is kind of stupid.

So does apple have to foot the bill for this service independently, or do we charge the developers some percentage of their revenue to provide this service?

Snark aside, I do think you're going to require some sort of hold/guarantee from the developers to apple if you want to force that sort of relationship.

> ...Apple complied with the law...

This is the only part that matters here. Doesn't matter how narrowly the law was complied with. Laws are the purview of lawmakers. If the lawmakers leave loopholes in their legislation all companies that can will avail themselves of these loopholes.

Blame the legislators. Those assholes left barn-door sized loopholes in their legal requirements for Apple's compliance.

You can be pretty sure that Apple lobbied hard to leave these holes. The legislators are happy they can tell their voters they finally did something and that they found a compromise.

It's a bit on us, the public, to not accept those alibi-type compromises.

I think Apple does not hold much sway over lawmakers here in the Netherlands. US tech companies are not very popular in general, and politicians are not corrupt for the most part. Many laws originate in Brussels.

Incompetence/cluelessness and lack of resources around tech is the bigger problem here.

> Blame the legislators. Those assholes left barn-door sized loopholes in their legal requirements for Apple's compliance.

Well that remains to be seen. The court just applied existing law for this specific conflict. Apple was found not complying, which is why the court issued this ruling. After implementing this narrow change they probably still do not comply. It would surprise me if dating apps would somehow be legally different from any other app. Apple is just stalling here. The next court case is going to cost money in addition to broadening the requirements on Apple, I think.

I think they did a rather good job and personally expected almost exactly this outcome given Apple’s position, to be honest. I was concerned that we’d get some sort of weird “you’re making these rules about us but we actually follow the rules” that they did elsewhere that was a real headscratcher.

I'm not sure it makes sense to blame legislators for loopholes. Bugs exist all the time in a variety of products. And few have to withstand the scrutiny of trillion dollar companies paying experts to pour over every aspect to find them.

I wonder if Apple restricting this to Netherlands only complies with the EU Digital Single Market: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Single_Market

> The Geo-blocking regulation adopted by the EU in February 2018 prohibits any attempt to restrict consumers access to goods and services on e-commerce websites on the basis of their nationality or country of residence and establishment.[31]

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